1. Field
The present invention relates generally to ducts and more particularly to a duct connection.
2. Related Art
Many nuclear plants have control rod drive mechanisms. Ducts are routed to the control ride drive mechanisms in order to provide cooling air to the control rod drive mechanisms. Occasionally, the ducts need to be uninstalled to perform maintenance and then reinstalled. For example, ducts routed to the control rod drive mechanisms need to be uninstalled during a refueling outage. The ducts can then be reinstalled after the refueling outage. However, the time to uninstall and reinstall the ducts adds to the downtime of the nuclear plant. Therefore, it is desirable to reduce the time to uninstall and reinstall the ducts.
In some prior designs, toggle clamps were used to couple ducts together. The number of toggle clamps needed to couple ducts together is proportional to the strength of the connection that is needed. As such, some connections which require higher strength will require many toggle clamps. While the time needed to install or uninstall a single toggle clamp is low, the time needed to install or uninstall many toggle clamps is long. Thus, the use of toggle clamps still results in a substantial amount of downtime due to uninstalling and reinstalling ducts.
It is an object of this invention to overcome these difficulties.